Criminal activity nuisance ordinances penalize tenants for calling emergency services in relation to certain illegal events, including domestic violence. There is a widespread concern that these policies will exert a chilling effect on the reporting of domestic violence and potentially increase the incidence and severity of domestic assaults. We exploit the sequential implementation of criminal activity nuisance ordinances by municipalities in Ohio, and estimate the direct impact of these ordinances on intimate partner homicides using a reduced form framework. We rule out an increase in intimate partner homicides following the enactment of a nuisance ordinance; in fact we estimate a negative impact.
The effect is driven by a reduction in partner homicides in cities with a higher proportion of renter-occupied homes prior to the implementation of the ordinances. We do not find any evidence that the effect can be attributed to selective migration out of cities that enacted nuisance ordinances or a change in police officer reporting practices.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.